Whitethorn by Bryce Courtenay Read Free Book Online

knew where her hiding place was in the burrow under the big rock. I decided I’d go and visit Mattress after school and he’d tell me his part of the story. For the first time in my life I felt as if I was in control of the information that guided my immediate future. Mattress and me knew more than all the others put together. Then I thought that maybe having an epileptic fit gives you such a shock that it wipes out your memory and Pissy clean forgot what happened and just made up the bit about how he’d been hit with a rock because he had to have someone to blame.
    If only I’d known what lay ahead I’d have jumped over my own tongue in my haste to confess to Mevrou. I’d willingly have taken the punishment coming to me, even the prospect of six of the best from Meneer Prinsloo’s terrible bamboo cane and a day spent in the dark and empty water tank.
    But that’s the problem with the road you travel in life, you never know what new disaster is waiting for you around the next corner.

C HAPTER TWO
    The Terrible Consequence of Loving
    I LOST NO TIME in going to see Mattress after school. Because Tinker was off the sow’s teats, I didn’t have to cart her over to the pigsty first thing after breakfast, an event that had always meant a rush as I’d have to let her get a good feed and take her back to the big rock. It would only just allow you time to get your pencil box for school and line up for the four-mile march into town.
    Now that she was weaned Tinker ate breakfast bread crusts. Crusts were the only thing you were allowed not to eat in that place, so sometimes some of the boys would leave their crusts behind and I’d scoop a few of them up after breakfast, my own included. The reason we were allowed to not eat our crusts was that Meneer Prinsloo had these Black Orpington chickens and while they had plenty of mielies and all that to eat, he had this theory that bread crusts were good for their feathers. Don’t ask me why. They were supposed to make the feathers more shiny or something, so that he’d win ribbons at the Magaliesburg Show. Gawie Grobler said his uncle in the Free State grew sunflower seeds that get crushed up for their oil and it’s the oil that goes into the bread and that’s what makes the chickens’ feathers shine. How a person would know a thing like that I couldn’t say but Gawie definitely wasn’t a bullshitter, and was clever as well. I asked why Meneer Prinsloo didn’t simply give his chickens sunflower seeds to eat.
    Gawie thought for a moment. ‘Have you ever seen a sunflower seed?’
    â€˜No, just a big sunflower, big as a dinner plate.’
    â€˜Well, the black part in the middle, that’s the seeds, man . . . and they as big as my fingernail and they hard as a rock when they dried. Chickens can’t eat them,’ he concluded convincingly.
    â€˜Why not?’ I’d seen chickens eating lots of things much bigger, grasshoppers for instance.
    â€˜Chickens got no teeth, man. They can eat them but they can’t break them open to get the oil inside and they just pop them out their bums, which doesn’t make their feathers shiny.’
    I’m always amazed at the things you can learn from a person. I’d never thought about chickens having no teeth. Anyway, that was good, Meneer Prinsloo would have to rely on bread crusts for his prize chickens’ shiny black feathers and this meant Tinker’s food supply was happily intact. One thing for sure, a dog wouldn’t be able to eat sunflower seeds, even though he did have teeth.
    There were these blue ribbons that Meneer Prinsloo’s chickens had won at country agricultural shows plastered on the wall behind the staff table that was raised on a platform in the dining room. The staff didn’t get the same food as us because they were grown-ups and deserved better.
    You see, even though Meneer Prinsloo, because he was the